Part 8 (1/2)

Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The _Triumph of Life_ itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the _terza rima_, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with clinging and r.e.t.a.r.ding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream:-- Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the mult.i.tude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky One of the million leaves of summer's bier; Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object, of another's fear;

And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And some fled from it as it were a ghost, Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath

But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,-- And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told Of gra.s.sy paths, and wood lawn-interspersed,

With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they Pursued their serious folly as of old.

Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the pa.s.sing of a mult.i.tude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by acc.u.mulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's _Trionfi_ will not fail to note what Sh.e.l.ley owes to that poet, and how he has trans.m.u.ted the definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and mystic.

And as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;

And a cold glare, intenser than the noon But icy cold, obscured with blinding light The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon--

When on the sunlit limits of the night Her white sh.e.l.l trembles amid crimson air, And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,--

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair;

So came a chariot on the silent storm Of its own rus.h.i.+ng splendour, and a Shape So sate within, as one whom years deform,

Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, Crouching within the shadow of a tomb.

And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like c.r.a.pe

Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam A Ja.n.u.s-visaged Shadow did a.s.sume

The guidance of that wonder-winged team; The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream

The music of their ever-moving wings.

All the four faces of that charioteer Had their eyes banded; little profit brings

Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere

Of all that is, has been, or will be done.

So ill was the car guided--but it past With solemn speed majestically on.

The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic effort, the solitude of Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make Sh.e.l.ley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw visions.